Ken Wilber - the Psychic Realm

The following page is from a research notes page by Allan Combs which is no longer on line (original url http://www.unca.edu/~combs/HCP/II/Narrative/7Psychic.htm ). I have kept the quotations, which are interesting, but left out the correspondences Of Wilber's Subtle Realm with other systems, as I feel these are - like the tables in the back of Wilber's Integral Psychology - rather forced. - MAK

Psychic Realm

An
informal 'phenomenological'
narrative:

"The
hike through the mountain with my fiancé was everything I wanted. Madly in love,
slightly crazed, we both were babbling fools. More like children, but it didn’t
matter. For an hour John had dutifully carried the picnic basket on his back,
kidding all the time that it was only fitting that he should carry the food of
the CEO of Digital Data Corporation, and I said, No, it’s only fitting for a
love slave, and that would be you. And I wasn’t even finished with the sentence
when suddenly I disappeared, and there was only the vista in front of me, and
John, and this body... but no me, or no I, or... well, I’m not
sure. I was one with all of this
scenery, one with the mountain, one with the sky, it was exhila­rating, a
little scary, but mostly completely peaceful, like coming home. I’ve never
really told anyone about it, because on Monday I was back at the office, running
Digital, and who would have believed me anyway?

It
never happened again. I sometimes read about things like this, one­ness and
whatnot, cosmic consciousness, but none of the words sound right for what
happened to me. I hear that some people can stay in this state constantly, but I
don’t see how, I really doubt it. You’d lose all sense of orientation, I think.
Anyway, it came and went. The more I think about it, the more I think it might
have been something like a small seizure. It didn’t seem like it at the time,
but now it does. After all, what else could it be, seriously?"

Q:Could you describe the levels of
meditation, and how they are experi­enced? What actually happens at each
stage?

A: When you practice meditation, one of
the first things your realize is that your mind—and your life, for that
matter—is dominated by largely subconscious verbal chatter. You are always
talking to yourself. And so, as they start to meditate, many people are stunned
by how much junk starts running through their awareness. They find that
thoughts, images, fantasies, notions, ideas, concepts virtually dominate their
awareness. They realize that these notions have had a much more profound
influence on their lives than they ever thought.

In
any case, initial meditation experiences are like being at the movies. You sit and watch all these fantasies
and concepts parade by, in front of your awareness. But the whole point is that
you are finally becoming aware of them. You are looking at them impartially and
without judgment. You just watch them go by, the same as you watch clouds float
by in the sky. They come, they go. No praise, no condemnation, no judgment—just
“bare witnessing.” If you judge your thoughts, if you get caught up in them,
then you can’t transcend them. You can’t find higher or subtler dimensions of
your own being. So you sit in medita­tion, and you simply “witness” what is
going on in your mind. You let the monkey mind do what it wants, and you simply
watch.

And what happens is,
because you impartially witness these thoughts, fantasies, notions, and images,
you start to become free of their uncon­scious influence. You are looking at
them, so you are not using them to look at the world. Therefore you become, to a
certain extent, free of them. And you become free of the separate-self sense
that depended on them. In other words, you start to become free of the ego. This
is the initial spiritual dimension, where the conventional ego “dies” and higher
structures of awareness are “resurrected.” Your sense of identity naturally
begins to expand and embrace the cosmos, or all of nature. You rise above the
isolated mind and body, which might include finding a larger identity, such as
with nature or the cosmos—”cosmic conscious-ness,” as R. M. Bucke called it.
It’s a very concrete and unmistakable experience.

And, I don’t have to
tell you, this is an extraordinary relief! This is the beginning of
transcendence, of finding your way back home. You realize that you are one with
the fabric of the universe, eternally. Your fear of death begins to subside, and
you actually begin to feel, in a con­crete and palpable way, the open and
transparent nature of your own being.

Feelings of gratitude
and devotion arise in you—devotion to Spirit, in the form of the Christ, or
Buddha, or Krishna; or devotion to your actual spiritual master; even devotion
in general, and certainly devotion to all other sentient beings. The bodhisattva
vow, in whatever form, arises from the depths of your being, in a very powerful
way. You realize you simply have to do whatever you can to help all sentient
beings, and for the reason, as Schopenhauer said, that you realize that we all
share the same nondual Self or Spirit or Absolute. All of this starts to become
obvious—as obvious as rain on the roof. It is real and it is concrete.

{An interview published in Quest,
1994 Spring , pp. 43-46.}

“Beginning
with ( to use the terms of yogic chakra psychology), the sixth chakra, the ajna chakra, consciousness starts to go transpersonal.
Consciousness in now going transverbal and transpersonal. ….This process
quickens and intensifies as it reaches the highest chakra- called-sahasrara- and then goes supramental as
it enters the seven higher stages of consciousness beyond the sahasrara. The
ajna, the sahasrara, and the seven higher levels are, on the whole referred to
as the subtle realm.”

“...the point of the low subtle - the astral psychic- is that
consciousness, by further differentiating itself from the min and body, is able
in some ways to transcend the normal
capacities of the gross bodymind and therefore operate upon the world and the organism
in ways that appear to the ordinary mind, to be quite fantastic and far-fetched.
For my own part, I find them a natural extension of the transcendent function of
consciousness.’

“My mind was, as
the Buddhists say, that of a monkey: compulsively active, obsessively motive.
And there I came face to face with my own Apollo complex, the difficulty in
transforming from the mental sphere to the subtle sphere. The subtle sphere ( or
the soul as the Christian mystics use the term) is the beginning of the
transpersonal realms; as such, it is supramental, transegoic, and transverbal.
But in order to reach that sphere, one must ( as in all transformations) “die”
to the lower capacity ( in this case the mental egoic). The failure to do so or
incapacity to do so is the Apollo complex. As the person with an Oedipus complex
remains unconsciously attached to the body and its pleasure principle, so the
person with an Apollo complex remains unconsciously attached to the mind and its
reality principle. (“Reality” here means “ institutional, rational, verbal
reality”,) which, although conventionally real enough, is nevertheless only an
intermediate stage on the path to Atman; that is, it is merely a description of
actual Reality itself, and thus, if clung to, eventually and ultimately prevents
the discovery of that actual Reality.

The struggle with my own obsessive/compulsive thinking- not particular
thoughts, as per neurosis (which is often indicative of an Oedipus-complex
holdover), but the very stream of thought itself- was an arduous task. ( An
excellent account of such initial battles has been given by Walsh, 1977, 1978)
as it was, I was fortunate to make some progress, to be able to eventually rise
above the fluctuations of mental contractions and discover, however initially, a
real incomparably more profound, more real, more saturated with being, more open
to clarity. This realm was simply that of the subtle, which is disclosed, so to
speak, after weathering the Apollo complex. In this realm it is not that
thinking necessarily ceases (although it often does, especially at the
beginning); it is that , even when thinking arises, it does not detract from the
broader background of clarity and awareness ( see for example. John Welwood’s
(1977) crystal account of this “transpersonal ground”). From the subtle, one no
longer ‘ gets lost in thoughts’ ;rather, thoughts enter consciousness and depart much as clouds traverse
the sky: with smoothness, grace, and clarity. Nothing sticks, nothing rubs,
nothing grates. Chuang Tzu “ The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It
grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives but does not keep.”

Wilber, K. (1999). “Odyssey”,
Collected Works.Vol.2 , pg41.

“... When you
practice meditation, one of the first things you realize is that your mind- and
your life, for that matter- is dominated by largely subconscious verbal chatter.
You are always talking to yourself. And so, as they start to meditate, many
people are stunned by how much junk starts running through their awareness. They
find that thoughts, images, fantasies, notions, ideas, concepts virtually
dominate their awareness. They realize that these notions have had a much more
profound influence on their lives than they ever thought.

In any case, initial meditation experiences are like being at the movies.
You sit and watch all these fantasies and concepts parade by, in front of your
awareness. But the whole point is that you are finally becoming aware of them.
You are looking at them impartially and without judgment. You just watch them go
by, the same as you watch clouds float by in the sky. They come, they go. No
praise, no condemnation, no judgment- just bare witnessing. If you judge your
thoughts, if you get caught up in them, then you can’t transcend them. You can’t
find higher or subtler dimensions of you own being. So you sit in meditation,
and you simply “witness” what is
going on in your mind. You let the monkey mind do what it wants, and you simply
watch.

And what happens is, because you impartially witness these thoughts,
fantasies, notions, and images, you start to become free of their unconscious
influence. You are looking at them, so you are not using them to look at the
world. Therefore you become, to a certain extent, free of them. In other words,
you start to become free of the ego. This is the initial spiritual dimension,
where the conventional ego “dies” and higher structures of awareness are
“resurrected”. Your sense of identity naturally begins to expand and embrace the
cosmos, or all of nature. You rise above the isolated mind and body, which might
include finding a larger identity, such as with nature or the cosmos- “cosmic
consciousness,” as R.M. Bucke called it. It’s a very concrete and mistakable
experience.

And, I don’t have to tell you, this is an extraordinary relief! This is
the beginning of transcendence, of finding your way back home you realize that
you are one with the fabric of the universe, eternally. Your fear of death
begins to subside, and you actually begin to feel, in a concrete and palpable
way, the open and transparent nature of your own being.

Feelings of gratitude and devotion arise in you-devotion to Spirit, in
the forms of the Christ, or Buddha, or Krishna; or devotion to your actual
spiritual master; even devotion in general, and certain devotion to all other
sentient beings. The bodhisattva vow, in whatever form, arises from the depths
of your being, in a very powerful way.You realize you simply have to do whatever you can to help all sentient
beings, and for the reason, as Schopenhauer said, that you realize that we all
share the same nondual Self or Spirit or Absolute. All of this starts to become
obvious- as obvious as rain on the roof. It is real and it is concrete.”